


Margo

by Fisticuffs



Series: Down and Out [2]
Category: Lost
Genre: Alpha!Jack, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M, Mpreg, omega!Sawyer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-22 20:31:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7452972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fisticuffs/pseuds/Fisticuffs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sawyer meets Jack's mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Margo

**Author's Note:**

> You absolutely have to read my other fic for this to make sense.
> 
> I don't know if anyone's interested, but I was very inspired to write Sawyer meeting Jack's mom. For some reason. I don't know why. I guess it just sort of felt like a necessary attachment. Because Jack mentioned it. And it gives a little insight into Sawyer post-island.
> 
> I only finished writing this today, so if there are any mistakes (probably so) forgive me.

 “Why I get my hair cut?”

“Because,” Sawyer explained, “you’re a little boy. And little boys outside the 70s are supposed to look nice. Especially since we gotta impress your grandmother.”

“Who is that?”

“She’s...” Sawyer could not think of a good way to explain. He only recently got Hank to understand that Jack had also been his father. “Your daddy,” he said, “Jack, this is his mom. Sorta like you and me. She’s Jack’s mom. I’m your mom.” He hated referring to himself as such. It was so emasculating. “You got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right.”

Anxiety began to set in. He did not know the woman beyond a passing mention. As a result of that, he did not care if she liked them or not. If she wanted nothing to do with him and Hank, good riddance. But it was Jack’s last request, and regardless of all the crap that alpha pulled, Sawyer could honor a dead man’s wishes.

He put his car in drive and turned the corner.

“Now, I want you on your best behavior, you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You let me do all the talkin’ first,” he said. “‘Cause this lady, your granny, she don’t even know we exist.”

“Why we- Why we goin’ to see her?” Hank questioned.

“Because your daddy asked us to, that’s why.”

“Jack.”

“Yeah,” Sawyer sighed, “Jack.”

He counted the houses as they drove. The numbers climbed higher and higher. When he found the right one, he had to pull the address out of his pocket to be certain.

“The hell,” he whispered to himself. “It’s a goddamn mansion.”

He checked the address from Kate again. He turned into the driveway.

The gate was closed, and half his car was left hanging out in the road. Sawyer adjusted his rearview mirror. He looked at himself. He combed his fingers through his hair. He centered the knot of his tie.

He pressed the button for the intercom.

It took a minute to get a reply.

“Yes?”

“Yeah.” Sawyer cleared his throat. He looked at the paper from Kate one more time, just to be certain he had the name right. “I’m looking for a Mrs. Margo Shephard. I was hopin’ I could talk to her.”

The line went quiet while the person relayed his message. “Mrs. Shephard is not seeing anyone today.”

Sawyer groaned. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Lucinda.”

“Well, Lucinda,” he said, “I’ve come a long way to see her, so if you could just let me in please. Tell her I... Tell her I knew her son. Tell her I knew Jack.”

The intercom cut out again. Sawyer sat there with every expectation of being turned away. And it would be a long time before he worked up the effort to try again.

The gate opened.

He drove inside.

Sawyer pulled up close to the house, taking his pick of spaces in the parking lot of a driveway.

He checked his reflection in the mirror again, and when he took Hank out of his carseat, he gave the boy a once over. His nice dress shorts and button-up shirt made him look presentable enough. And a haircut never hurt.

“Lookin’ good,” Sawyer said. He ruffled Hank’s hair and held his hand out for him to grab.

Hank’s other hand clutched a small, brown bear. It had been with him through the most trying days of his young life, and now the thing was his best friend. For four months, that bear had hardly left his side.

They walked up the steps. A maid was waiting at the door. She let them in and bid them wait.

Sawyer stood patiently in the foyer. It was opulent. Everything was handpicked to display wealth and sophistication. In the center of it all, Sawyer’s tie felt cheap. His shirt looked wrinkled. The slight stomach it covered came off as the gross neglect of diet and exercise. His shoes were dull. His hair was disordered. His son was restless and fiddled where he stood.

“Don’t touch anything,” Sawyer whispered at Hank. His settlement with Oceanic was a handsome one, exponentially higher than what the original Oceanic Six received, he was told. It did not mean he wanted to replace anything in that house.

The maid returned and behind her was an older woman.

Margo looked like Jack did— had— whenever he got that no-nonsense attitude about him. She was severe, but also she seemed to have a potential for compassion.

At the moment, Margo was disheveled and quickly thrown together. Sawyer would not have been surprised if it was like father, like son, like wife. He did not blame her for drinking. God knew the woman had enough reasons.

Sawyer cleared his throat and took a step forward. He extended his hand. “Mrs. Shephard,” he greeted. “My name is James Ford. This is my son, Hank.”

She sized him up with a glance to his dull shoes, up his wrinkled shirt, over his cheap tie, and to his too long hair. Finally, she turned her gaze to his outstretched hand and shook it. “Mister Ford,” she said, “how very nice to meet you.” The sentiment was cold, a social convention and little else. “I thought I knew most of Jack’s friends. They’ve all been by recently.”

“I’m not his friend.”

“You said—”

“Said I knew him,” Sawyer reiterated. “The terms of our friendship were always a little rocky. Either my fault or his, but we had fun passin’ the buck around all the same.”

“What do you want?” Margo questioned. Her tentative civility was shifting, slipping.

“Change of venue might be nice,” Sawyer suggested. “No offense, ma’am, but it’s a little stuffy in here.” He nodded his head at a window. “But I see you got a pretty yard, and, you know, I ain’t found a park I like yet for Hank here.” She looked like she had every intention of telling him to leave, but Sawyer had an effect on people. He was aware of it, and he utilized it whenever he could. He kept them curious. He gave just enough that they would do whatever he said to get an answer.

“Lucinda,” Margo called. The maid came quickly. “Bring tea out to the patio, if you would.” Lucinda left just as swift, off to do as told. Margo gestured outside. “Shall we, Mister Ford?”

He opened the door. “Ladies first.” Hank went out after her, and Sawyer closed the door behind them.

The lawn was green with the timing of Spring and the attention of a well paid gardener. There was a tall mountain range behind the house that almost had Sawyer missing the view from the Barracks. He used to sit out on his porch and trace every rise and fall of those lush hills.

“Hank,” he called, taking the boy off his behavioral leash, “go run around. Try not to get too dirty.” He would. Those clothes would be ruined. Sawyer did not care. They could afford more.

Margo sat down at a garden table and Sawyer joined her.

He did not speak. He was not sure how to begin explaining the very complicated circumstances of his visit. They sat in silence for so long their tea tray was brought out. Sawyer never cared for the drink when it was hot; he preferred it over ice, but he could suffer through.

“If you have some manner of blackmail,” Margo spoke, guessing incorrectly, “you should know how little I care for blackmailers. I ask that you leave my son’s memory in peace, but I won’t bribe you to keep it that way, Mister Ford. I’m afraid you won’t get any money from me.”

“I don’t want your money,” Sawyer said. “And unless I was seriously strapped for a sitter, I don’t think I’d bring my son with me to get it.”

“How old is your son?” Margo asked, and Sawyer was surprised she asked it. But it was a common question, as he was learning. For some reason, people in the real world loved discussing children.

“Two,” he answered, “two-and-a-half. He’s been growin’ so much I’m about to put a brick on his head. His eyes changed recently too. Used to be blue. Now they’re green like his daddy’s.” She tried to guess in her head. Sawyer knew she would never ask out loud. “I’m an omega,” he supplied, putting her out of the misery of that riddle. It was so much easier to confess than it had been three years ago.

“You don’t act like one.” She sipped her tea.

“Never was one to do what people expected,” he replied.

“Jack did the same thing,” Margo said, returning to the matter of children, relating to a stranger as a way of filling dead air until Sawyer revealed his purpose. “He had blue eyes as a baby.”

Sawyer could only put off the inevitable for so long. Eventually, it felt cruel keeping the secret from her. “Mrs. Shephard, I don’t know how much you keep up with the news about your son’s most recent plane crash—”

“Seven people,” she interrupted. “Seven people returned, including the pilot. He and Kate Austen were the only ones to actually be on the plane when it took off from LA. Two passengers are rumored to be from the original Flight 815, who reportedly went unnoticed by the Oceanic Six but managed to survive on their own. The other three were not passengers on either flight. Two of them claim to have been shipwrecked, and the third remains a complete mystery. Yes, Mister Ford,” she said, “I keep up with the news.”

Sawyer sighed, taking in what she knew, trying to decide how much of the truth to give her. “I asked them to keep my name out of it.” He took a drink of tea in an effort to pace himself. “There are a lot of shady people in my past... I think they’re better off not knowin’ I survived that plane crash and am now loaded because of it. And my boy,” he pointed at Hank where he was trying to climb a small tree, “my son is our mystery guest behind door number seven.”

“But you said you knew Jack,” Margo asserted. She was wildly confused and trying to process very much very suddenly. That was the inquiry she stuck with, the lie that the two groups of Oceanic survivors never met.

“You can ask questions until it’s past all our bedtimes,” Sawyer said, “but all it’s gonna lead to is another question, and another, and another.” With luck and precise verbal coercion, he would dissuade her from asking those questions. The last thing he needed was a label of insanity. “Fact of the matter is we lied. Just like your son lied last time. But, being the studious woman you so obviously are, I think you knew some of both those stories never made much sense.” She nodded, confirming as much. Sawyer knew there were a lot of holes. He patched them as best he could, but their situation made far too little sense from the beginning. “So here’s the long and the short of it: I met your boy. Us and some other folk were marooned a few months before they got rescued. Don’t ask why I didn’t come with. It’s another long story with a whole bunch of them questions.”

Margo waited patiently. She knew Sawyer was building to something. She did not know what.

“And like I... like I said,” Sawyer continued, “I’m an omega. Suppressants, they lasted a few months.” He stretched the truth and exaggerated just how many pills he had. It spared Margo the idea of her son having fruitless, filthy sex for fun. “Eventually,” Sawyer took a deep breath, “I ran out. Bound to happen. And Jack, he- he always was one to help people who really needed it.” He could not look at her, not until he finished. Instead, he watched Jack’s son run around on bare feet, throwing his bear in the air and trying to catch it. “Hank got those green eyes honest,” he said, “just like his daddy.”

Silence. A car alarm chirped down the block. A bird sang. Hank grunted as he dug his head into the grass and did a flip.

Margo wailed. One quick shriek out of her throat and she began crying. She sniveled and choked in ways so uncharacteristically inelegant.

Sawyer felt awkward around crying women. He handed her a cloth napkin from the table, and she gratefully took it to wipe at her eyes.

“I’ll understand,” he said, “if you wanna run a DNA test on Hank. I won’t blame you one bit.” He went to her, confessed to her, with every expectation she would demand one. “I’m guessin’ you might have something of Jack’s for comparison.”

Margo did not say anything. She cried to herself. It was an uneven sob of emotion. It was the raw reaction to news unexpected.

Sawyer let her cry. She carried on uninterrupted until Hank walked up to them. He saw she was upset, and it was in the boy’s kind way to try and make it better. Hank looked at Sawyer, who gave him a nod of consent. He was free to talk to Margo now.

“You okay?” Hank asked. He stood back, giving her space. Margo looked up at him and there was worry in her wet eyes, a fear as if she might wake up. Hank held up his stuffed toy. “You wan’ hold bear? My Jack give him to me.”

Margo sniffed and wiped at her eyes again. She gripped the napkin tightly in her lap. “That’s okay, sweetheart,” she said. Her voice was more balanced than her emotions. “You should hold onto it.”

Hank stepped forward. He looked at Sawyer again. Sawyer nodded. He opened his little arms and gave Margo a hug. “You okay,” he said. She held him with a hand on his back and another on that blond head of his. Eventually, she let go and Hank drew back to a normal distance. “My Jack, he go and he do... he do somethin’. But me and my daddy, we go here. ‘Cause my Jack ask us to.”

Hank glanced at Sawyer. He gave the boy a thumb’s up, letting him know he did very well. “Go on,” he said. “You keep playin’ while we finish talking.” Hank ran away. Together, Sawyer and Margo watched him have that simple, uninhibited fun of childhood.

“He’s so beautiful,” Margo quietly said. She was reserved still, giving only a percentage of belief, inhabiting awe. Sawyer could not blame her. He had been where she was, doubting something he never even had the imagination to think up. Soon she would realize she was not dreaming. It was real.

“He damn sure is,” Sawyer replied. “Though I guess I’m only supposed to take half the credit.” He saw some of Jack in the boy. He wished there were more. Those eyes though, those green eyes. They finished changing color not long after they got home, like an homage to their departed source. “You should know, Mrs. Shephard,” he said, “regardless of whatever story we had to make up and tell people, it wasn’t the impact that killed your boy. He was too good for that. Jack died a hero. Bastard saved us all. He stayed behind so he could protect his son... and his...” Sawyer felt a lump in his throat. He swallowed. “And his daughter.”

Margo looked at him and her makeup was running horribly. She said nothing, waiting for explanation.

Sawyer reached in his breast pocket and pulled out a blurry picture. He gave it to her. “Took that yesterday,” he said. Sonograms had progressed and become so much clearer than when he had Hank.

Margo petted the picture— the promise— with her fingertips. “This is...”

“I only had Jack back in my life a week,” he said, “two weeks, technically. But we... Well, we ’missed’ each other, I guess you could say. That’s probably the most proper way to put it anyway.”

Margo started crying again, and Sawyer almost regretted having set her off. It was less severe, however, and she recovered quickly. She wiped at her eyes and face with the napkin. Sawyer began to feel that he could make the woman believe whatever he wanted, thus was her desperation. Were he a younger man, a poorer man, he would have taken such advantage of her.

“Your parents... must, uh, be so happy to have you back,” Margo said, still looking at the sonogram printout, “and to have grandchildren.”

“No, ma’am.” Sawyer shook his head. “My folks died when I was just a kid.” He spared her the details. “It’s just me and Hank. Boy’s got a sister out there I ain’t figured out how to introduce him to yet.” He sighed. “And an aunt and cousin off tryin’ to do their thing.” He was uncertain how much, if anything, Margo knew about Claire. He exploited obscurity and let her think it was his sister. “And now there’s you,” he said. “I know about Christian, so that makes you the only grandparent Hank and the baby’s got left.” There was a certain responsibility in that, but Sawyer expected nothing from her. He told her as much, but Margo did not seem to hear.

“Would you like to stay for dinner?” she asked.

“Uh,” Sawyer hummed as he thought about it. He had not anticipated such a long visit. After all, she was Jack’s mother, not his, but she was Hank’s grandmother. The boy needed some family. “I suppose we ain’t got nothin’ planned to get in the way of that.”

“Any requests?” she asked. “What does... What does Hank like?”

“He’ll eat what’s put in front of him,” Sawyer said. He was trying to keep his son from being a picky eater. And Lord knew he himself had learned to eat what was there or starve— literally. “Mac-and-cheese,” he told Margo, just to give her something to work with. “He likes mac-and-cheese.”

“And what about you?” Margo questioned. “Anything specific? Any- any cravings?”

Sawyer groaned, unable to stop himself. She was trying to get in his good graces, but he hated being treated like a pregnant person. “Whatever’s fine by me.”

“I hope you don’t have a long trip home afterward. Where are you staying?” Margo inquired. “Are you living in Los Angeles?” Sawyer could tell she was trying to suss out if they resided there or if they came for the purpose of visiting her.

“We got a place in the city.” They were living in a hotel— a nice hotel. Sawyer had the money to keep them there for a long while. He was enjoying the luxury of not having to make a decision or a plan. “Don’t know where we’ll end up yet,” he confided. “Might move us back east, Alabama or Tennessee, where I grew up. Simpler there, quiet.”

“Let me know what you decide,” Margo said. She was made concerned by something Sawyer already knew: he did not owe her anything. The only reason he was there at all was because Jack asked it.

“Yeah,” he said, knowing then that he was letting the woman into his life— into their lives— to stay, “I’ll let you know.”

Margo did not insist on a DNA test, and when Sawyer brought it up himself a second time, she ignored the question and changed the subject. He assumed from her behavior that she did not want one. She was too upset over the very idea of it coming back negative. Margo trusted Sawyer’s word alone because she did not want to lose the last shred of family she had. He would let her have it. He would let her be as involved as she wanted. He would do this. For Jack.

“I miss him.” Sawyer had no one else he could tell that secret to.

“Me too,” Margo said.

They had something in common.

**Author's Note:**

> I only picked a gender for their second child because it made Sawyer's reveal about being pregnant easier. "Son... and daughter." Literally the only reason. Because before that paragraph I was just up in the air about it, not caring one way or the other. I was going to leave it obscure and let the audience choose what they wanted. You still can, if you so decide. Ignore that sentence.


End file.
